Moby-Dick>Philosophy>CYNICS

> Nicktalop
> BOOKS
> Books>MOBY-DICK
> Moby-Dick>PHILOSOPHY

Simple Living Isn’t › Desperado Philosophy. A Genial, Desperado Philosophy » First Thoughts. A friend, working his way again through Moby Dick writes me to say that the book contains “the greatest description of the American soul,” in the first paragraph of Chapter 49: There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.

However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker.
Antisthène. Un article de Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie libre.

Although presented in a tone of comic exaggeration, the wedding of Ishmael and Queequeg as a symbolic miscegenation that strikes at the heart of American and Western history possesses real potential to undercut a system of authority. <a href="/glossary.php?
Word=homophobia&part=" target="_blank">homophobia</a> as a force linked to racism and required by patriarchal society just as much as the suppression of women. Male friendship, as Melville presents it, has the capacity of interrupting an economy of production. Like his contemporary Whitman, Melville sees in male friendship a social potential that is linked to the democratic mission of America. In the chapter "The Doubloon," Melville has almost all of his characters read the coin nailed to the masthead.
Online Etymology Dictionary. Desperado - Origin of desperado. Moby Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville - Chapter 54 - The T.

Chapter 54 - The Town-Ho's Story (As told at the Golden Inn) The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, is much like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet more travellers than in any other part.

It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. *The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head, still used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin. For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one saint's eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn. "'Lakeman!

"On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but- I crave your courtesy- may be, you shall soon hear further of all that. "'Damn your eyes! "'Mr. "'Canallers!
'
Diogenes of Sinope. Diogenes of Sinope was a controversial figure. His father minted coins for a living, and when Diogenes took to debasement of currency, he was banished from Sinope.[1] After being exiled, he moved to Athens to debunk cultural conventions. Diogenes modelled himself on the example of Hercules. He believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. He used his simple lifestyle and behaviour to criticise the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt society.

He declared himself a cosmopolitan. After being captured by pirates and sold into slavery, Diogenes eventually settled in Corinth. Life[edit] Diogenes was born in the Greek colony of Sinope on the south coast of the Black Sea, in either 412 BC or 404 BCE.[2] Nothing is known about his early life except that his father Hicesias was a banker.[6] It seems likely that Diogenes was also enrolled into the banking business aiding his father. In Athens[edit]